Saturday, December 18, 2010

Parenting Tactics

Today's blog post about Ghana is going to talk a lot about parenting styles here in country. For most of the villagers in my area, and indeed in most parts of Ghana (except Accra, where things are most westernized) children are viewed as small people that you have to take care of. Parents generally provide all of the necessary things like clothes and food, but don't take into account that a child needs to have adult supervision at a young age. Consequently, kids evolve into groups that, in a sense, raise each other through interaction with other children, and are not raised by adults most of the time.
There are two ways of thinking about why parents let their children 'run amok', except for disciplinary situations. First way of thought – parents prefer to let their children grow up independently so that they will become 'strong' and self-sufficient when they reach adulthood. Second way of thought – parents don't know how to be effective parents because their parents did not take an active interest in their lives, and as such don't know how to raise children to succeed in academia. Its important to note that in both of these, parents do less 'work' raising children than in the US. Generally speaking, parents don't sit down with kids at a young age to help them learn the alphabet or how to count or how to read; it could be because mothers have a crap-ton of work they need to do, like preparing food (at least 2 hours), bathing themselves and kids (1 hour), cleaning the house (2 hours), and going to visit relatives (2 hours).
In summary, to compare between US and rural Ghanaian parenting styles, American parents teach their children to prepare for school by reading to them and investing time in their kids, and developing a talking relationship. People in my town, from what I've seen, don't really prepare their kids for school and believe that teachers are entirely responsible for their child's education; also, because it is taboo to question an authority figure, parents talk at, rather than with kids when they get home.
Also of note, on Sunday I went to a neighboring town, Kpedze, by bicycle (maybe about 8 miles to get there). I had met a friend in Ho, my regional capital who lives there so I went to visit him (incidentally, his name is also Mike, just like the headmaster of my school, my landlord, and myself). He cooked some jollof rice for me, but we had a lot of discussions about how to raise children. His way of thinking about child rearing is vastly different than others: he doesn't let his kids go andplay with other kids in the neighborhood precisely because of how they are raised. Mike sits down with his kids every night, teaches them English, teaches them to read and take education seriously so that they can succeed in school. Think of everything I have said about how Ghanaians raise their kids, and now reverse that for Mike – in summary, he is determined to have his kids go far in life, and I know that they will succeed.
I dont mean to imply that all Ghanaians rear their children like this, but from the majority of parents I've seen its true. Obviously, there are many exceptions: like people living in Accra, the capital, are most westernized with their beliefs.
Fun Facts:
Harmattan has started, and because there is so much dust in the air sunsets are hazy and brilliant.
The day I'm writing this the key to the school was missplaced, so we are all waiting outside.
I'm teaching Kofi, the small boy in my complex, English, the alphabet, and numbers at night.
Temperature outside now: ~80 degrees.
A student just gave me 40 bananas and peanuts as a thank you for the semester.
Average price for a large, satisfying lunch in my town - 30 cents.

Friday, December 10, 2010

A Funeral (but not sad)

Last weekend I went to my first Ghanaian funeral. Now, this isn't your typical American funeral with lots of crying and weeping; it was a funeral with lots of eating, dancing, and socializing. First of all, everyone that goes to a funeral of someone who died 'before their time' wears black, red, and brown to show mourning. However, if the person is old and 'the time is right' then everyone wears white and black to show the they are happy for the person to move on to the next life. Funerals are more like a party and less like a time of mourning, especially because some funerals aren't held until several weeks, months, or up to two years after someone has died!
So back to my funeral: I, being the only white person there among hundreds of Ghanaians, stuck out like... well like a white sheep among a flock of black sheep. I wore black clothes (which are extremely hot in the tropical sun!) and greeted tons of people. However, the best part of the funeral (if there is such a thing) was that my landlord, an 80-yera old man, has unofficially adopted me into his family! And, at said funeral, I entertained not as the Yevu, but as a member of the Asafo family. We met the paramount chief of our surrounding villages who is still chief after being enstooled (crowned) in 1936, visited a few houses and said our remorses to the families, and I even got to eat a nice meal and beer in the end. I had a great time going as an Asafo; supposidly as the next family meeting I will be introduced to the other members of the family – its an extended family over several towns, and I'm sure jokes will abound about how the all black family has a white person in it.
Things are starting to get hot, and its almost time to buy a fan in my non-air conditioned concrete house. The concrete house is an excellent insulator, and proves it worth about midday when its still cool inside and scorching outside... however the flip side is the sun heats up the building and doesnt cool off until the next morning, making going to sleep inside painful. In fact, I've thought of buying a hammock to put outside and sleep in my courtyard, but then I wouldn't be under a mosquito net outside, and would rapidly develop malaria. School term is almost over, so we are giving exams. Speaking of which, Religious and Moral Education (RME) is a class, and some of the standardized questions are just that – questionable. Examples are as follows, and read the question before you look at the answer to see how YOU perform as a model student in middle school.
Q: It is good practice to ____ while eating.

A: keep quiet

Q: Children must be ____ to promote a good relationship with parents.

A: obedient

Q: God always blesses people who _____.

A:donate money for His work.

These were all from our end-of-term exams. So, Kofi means I was born on a certain day of the week, Yevu means white person, and Asafo is the family that has taken me in in Ghana. I have another funeral to go this weekend, so I look forward to being called Kofi Michael David 'Yevu' Asafo Shoup.

Sunday, November 28, 2010

Sports Day!

Sports day! Or should I say two days. Maybe more like two weeks. When sports are going on at school, or when there is training for them, school, in my fellow teachers' words is "ineffective". While in the US sporting events for school are after school or the weekends, sports are right in the middle of the week, in this case Wednesday and Thursday. Learning in school does not take place during these days; instead, the entire school shows up at Dzolokpuita (a town about a 50 minute walk away) to compete in our little sporting bloc.
Unfortunately, while I did not participate as a coach or a referee, I like to think I provided some emotional support being the only 'yevu' (white person) at a sporting event with over 250 people to the students at my school. Now, not only will an unnamed member of my family only see pictures of me with other Peace Corps Volunteers, but that person will see me now sitting watching football and at a palm-wine spot with a fellow teacher.
My small boy, who it about 4 years old can speak only a small small English, I can now deal with appropriately by giving him small tasks like carrying my soap to the shower, hanging up my clothes after I wash them, fetching me water, etc. I have about 50 pictures of him because he insists on Kofi Photo Shoots to broadcast his bling (my personal items he finds interesting) like my watch, sunglasses (gankui), hat (kuku), and shirt (dzimewui). He wants to know about America, but I can't communicate to him about all the subtleties of US life. I like to think that I'm getting a taste of what being a dad is like because he routinely falls asleep in my lap and then I carry him back to his bed. Also, I have the responisblility, per se, of entertaining him if we aren't doing anything else that evening. The other little girl who lives in my complex is a little over 2 years old, but for some reason the last 2 weeks whenever she sees me she runs away! It wasn't like that, say, a month ago, but I can't imagine what's going through her head.
Teaching is going well, but our syllabus of topics we need to cover is way larger than the amount of time we have for it. ICT is easy to fit in all the topics, but Math is much harder. Out of the 150 pages I am supposed to teach this year, after the first term I will be about 10 pages behind!
For some reason, Blogger won't let me upload photos or videos here, so go to facebook to see photos and videos.
Fun facts:
One of the popular songs here is currently titled "Sex Machine"
I found out one of the students who comes to me for ICT to use my computer in Junior High School is 22.
My fellow teacher says she is too skinny and 'wants to get fat' to get a husband soon.
I am, on average, at 6'0 about 6 inches taller than the typical Ghanaian man.
Still malaria-free

Friday, November 5, 2010

It's Friday!

Friday! But aren't I supposed to be teaching on Friday? You would be correct, on Fridays I do teach. So what am I doing in my regional capital Ho and not at school?
Oh, well our school has started athletics, and next Friday is our first outing. But our students can't come after school because most of them have to go and farm; so we hold practice from 5:15am until about 8:30am. Then the students go home and are supposed to bathe, change clothes, and come back to school.
Well, today being Friday all of the students that are playing on teams (more than half of the school) decided just to take the rest of the day off. Y'know, start the weekend early. School is supposed to start at 7:45, so I arrive at 7:30 every day, and by the time 10:00 had passed, they were only about 40% of students at the school. I should also mention that our school has 6 teachers and 1 headmaster, yet for most of the morning I was the ONLY teacher on the schoolgrounds, responsible for 40 mid-teenagers.
Some friends were coming to Ho today, and as such I spontaneously decided to come and meet them. I rode my bike to the nearest large town and caught a ride to the city.
I should mention that even though we are in a third-world country, and cars and generally crappy, some taxis CAN go fast. In fact, my one today topped out at around 135 km/hour (around 84 mph). This wouldnt bother me on a freeway, but Ghanaian roads have blind corners, not to mention we pass numerous small towns. We made it alive with 7 people in our taxi (people learn that personal space is only optional).
Next week, I have an In-Service Training with most of my friends in Education, so I am looking forward to that.
The things I miss most about the US is food.
Current Weight - 172 pounds (about 5 less than when I came here)
Number of canings witnessed - 100+
Average number of eggs eaten, per day - 4

Saturday, October 16, 2010

School Starts, Part 2

This past week has been pretty good. I've found things to fill my time, so I'll give you a sample of a weekday: Up at 5:45, work out for a little bit, take a shower, eat bread and peanut butter (called groundnut paste here), then its off to school by 7:15. School days vary, but I average about two hours a day actually teaching, and the rest of the time I am either preparing lesson plans, talking with teachers, reading, or zoning out. School ends at 2pm, so amidst little kids from the kindergarten yelling "Yevu!" (White man) I walk to our small little market. There are only about 3 people actually selling things at any given time, so I do mean small. I pick up some fresh eggs, onions, spaghetti, or whatever else I need to make dinner. But, I must be finished cooking and cleaning by 6:15 because it gets dark and we don't have a light in our kitchen area. Usually some students come around for an hour or two and I let them use my computer to practice typing or teach some ICT in addition to school. One student, however, is about 16 and is really good with computers, so I monitor his usage but don't need to tell him what to do. Then, its off to bed by 9pm to wake up early for the next day.
I gave my first quiz Thursday, and it was less than stellar. Since students have always copied off each other for tests since a very early age, about half will do even more work to cheat while I am looking instead of looking back into their notes. I just don't get it. I have strict rules if they cheat, but a select few still try their darndest.
So our school has/had a problem. Some students can't read. At all. This is a problem because all tests are in English. How can a student be expected to answer a question when they can't even read the words? Well, all standardized tests are multiple choice with 4 answers, so guessing on the entire test you will get on average a 25%. BUT, to pass you only need to get a 40%! So we have pulled about 30 of our 90 students out of class for a month or two to teach them to read English, and maybe speak it too. They may repeat the grade, but its better in the long term that they know English, and my classes are now comprised of only the 'smart' students, or even those who can understand what I am saying.
I am really starting to love my site, my community, and everything related to it. I'm quite happy with how things are turning out currently, so I hope this will continue.

Saturday, October 9, 2010

School Starts!!

YES!! School has started and I've been really excited to have something to do finally in my community. We have six teachers and a headmaster at our JHS, but so far there has yet to be one day when every teacher shows up. The school is run on a prefect system, and the only other experience I've had with prefects has been reading Harry Potter. Also, we have different sections (Red, Gold, and Green - the colors of the Ghanaian Flag) that compete for points depending on how well they behave and how well they do on test... the only time I've known of such a system is once again Harry Potter and their Houses. Prefects are students that have been given responsibilities like sweep the library every morning, make sure the school grounds are clean, or lead the school during Assembly, so its like halfway between a student and teacher because if other students misbehave, the prefects report them and even sometimes take discipline into their own hands (discouraged).
For a school with around 110 students and 6 teachers, it makes sense to hand off responsibility to students as much as possible. In fact, I (including being in charge of Red section) hardly need to do any real work. Walking to school, students come to carry my backpack for me. If I'm hungry, students go and fetch me lunch. If a teacher leaves something at my house way across town, its far too much work for the teacher to walk there: he or she tells a student where it is and to go and bring it. Also, if a teacher's yard need to be mowed (called weeding), students are rallied up, and instead of going to school they go and weed!
We had a staff meeting this week. Was it held after school or before school? No, it took up half the day and all the teachers were required to attend in full. When classes are supposed to be taught but the teacher doesn't show up or is otherwise unable to teach, there is no substitute teacher. The students sit for the entire period in the classroom. I've tried to address this waste of time with my headmaster and how to change it, and he said yes to my ideas but means no to implementation.
Every Wednesday morning is Worship time, so all the students gather in a classroom to sing and dance and pray. This was Wednesday, we had a guest motivational speaker come in to inspire them to try in school. I didn't participate in worship so I was in the teachers lounge doing lesson plans, and my colleague, Clement, comes to get me to come be to motivational speaker. Me, taken totally unawares, thought it was a joke. Surely, I could at least have a few minutes to prepare. Nope, he said, I must come now and they expected me to talk for at least 15 minutes in front of our whole school and I could not get out of it. So I gave a talk for 15 minutes on the fly about why they should try in school.
I do not mean to paint my school in a bad light, there are just a lot of things that an American can come in and think "This should change, that should change and things would be better", but we have limited resources here and motivation. Students have many chores when they get home, and parents take education as something only done at school. It will also take students a long time to earn any money, possibly 7 years from now. Or, if they stop school, they can immediately go out and earn some cash. Even though we are supposed to teach in English all the time, some students can barely read and others can barely speak, and this is by 7th grade! I am however, happy that there are some students who have a desire to excel, and I am teaching them ICT (information communication technology) two days a week in addition to school to some students.
Favorite line in grading papers so far: "sources of data provide facts bitch not create them"
Number of canings witnessed: 10+
Random names of students in my classes: Redeemer, Saviour, Peace, Divine, Grace, Blessing

Saturday, September 18, 2010

Greetings in Ghana

So this post is going to deal with how greetings work in Ghana, and more importantly Volta Region because thats where I live. Waking up in the morning, the first thing I do is go around and greet everyone that lives in my compound, and furthermore the greetings ALWAYS take the exact same route. In English, you could say any number of: what's up, how's it going, good morning, hello, how are you, etc. In Ewe, you choose your greeting in the morning from the following list: ŋdi. The ŋ is pronounced like ng in sing, but the end of the g is unvoiced. So its
A. ŋdi. (Good Morning)
B. ŋdi, aƒemeto wo de? (Are you house members okay?)
A. Wodo. (They are fine)
B. Efo mi de? (Are you awake/fine?)
A. Ee. (Yes)

Depending on the time of day, ŋdi changes to ŋdo, woale, and fie, but the other parts stay exactly the same. In fact, because this greeting always happens, if you say it correctly people assume you speak fluent Ewe and so they keep asking you questions in Ewe. I use this a lot - Nye me se egome o = I dont understand, when they start saying too much.
Also, people like to know where you are going - just because. So if I'm walking around the town, someone I've never met will yell out "Afika neyina/Where are you going?". This took a long time to get used to... my first reaction when I heard this was "why do they care where I'm going?", but thats not the point. The point is to communicate with them and to build a relationship with other members in the community. Think about it - if you talk with everyone walking by, even if its just a simple question, people will know you. In fact, here its rude NOT greet people you walk past and houses you come across; I've made the mistake of not looking inside someone's house to see if they are there and was berated because I didn't greet the person. Its very much a talk-wtih-everyone-on-the-street culture, unlike many parts of the US. Also, if you give your phone number out (not recommended), people will call you just to talk about every 3 days or so, even if you met them for a second on the street: as such, I tend to be creatively untruthful and say my phone is broken or the government monitors my calls or I cant figure out how to unlock it, or my goat ate it.

Tuesday, September 14, 2010


Unfortunately school has been delayed by a week. I found this out Sunday - we were scheduled to start teaching Monday. Here is a video of my house, but the other one with my entire complex doesn't want to upload.

Saturday, September 11, 2010

Water

For this blog post, I am going to talk about how Ghana has dealt with not having clean drinking water. There are no water reservoirs for drinking water like there are in the US. In order to have running water, you must have a Polytank to store the water, and similar to mini-water tower it has to be elevated. This way, people can take non-bucket showers, have faucets, etc. But as far as drinking the water goes, it is unsafe to do so. Either you must purchase a large water filter, boil your water, or buy water sachets. These sachets are made in each district town, but basically water is purified en masse and a machine puts it in a plastic bag, sort of like a square water balloon.
So, when you are travelling around Ghana you dont look for a water fountain, faucet, or anything like that. You look for these people that are selling 'pure water' on their heads.
On a side note, at the stations you wait in the vehicle for it to fill up and people come to try and sell you various items like toothbrushes, any type of food, nuts, and water, among other things; they also carry them around on top of their heads which A) is amazing B) looks really heavy and C) Ive never seen something fall off someone's head. Back to water, once you get the sachet you simply bite off a corner and drink. Its a pretty ingenious idea, but the downside is that empty water sachets are found everywhere. Instead of carrying my nalgene around, I just buy a water for 5 pesewas (3 cents) because its chilled, tastes okay, and I dont have to lug all my water with me travelling.

Wednesday, September 8, 2010

New Updates from Volta Region

School starts in 5 days. I've been spending a lot of time at my house in my village, so I will start to update you all on them. Kofi, who is about 5 years old, I am slowly teaching bits of English. I brought some lacrosse balls to use for juggling, and he just likes to simply walk around all day with one (they are different colors, so he must say the colors of the balls correctly to get any for the day). Fafali is about 2 years old, and if any of my family has heard a baby screaming in the background while they call, its her. She cant say my name, so she yells "Ai" when she wants my attention. Kekeli is about 10 and speaks English very well, but he watches television all day and I rarely see him playing outside. My landlord (a 76 year old badass) is still full of energy, though he cannot walk very far to his farm. Also, Kofina is essentially my caretaker because she cooks dinner for me, but she is always doing something - never any down time it seems like... she does have three kids to look out for. Village life is good.
Number of complete fish found in my food: 1
Number of goats found inside my room yesterday: 2
Countdown until I will return to the US: ~700 days
Current temperature: ~75 F
Number of Werther's Hard Candy eaten in Ghana: 42
Number of times I've been to a police station in Ghana: 1
Okay I will tell a bit of a story here. I went down to the Kente festival with a few friends to see all the cloth and have a good time. It was fantastic. Except for a digital camera that went missing. It belonged to a Ghanaian but she was pretty sure that one of us took it. At the time, we all had our pricey SLR cameras and had no need for a simple 1 MP point-and-shoot AA battery operated camera from 1999, so she called the police to search the house we were at and everything in it (including our stuff). Long story short, it took four hours out of our day including a trip to our district police station. The final result? as the police were about to look through our stuff a second time (with us watching very closely to make sure nothing of ours went missing), the camera magically appeared where one of our bags had been about a minute earlier. Since the Americans were all in a different room when it was replaced and found, we concluded that someone in the household may have 'borrowed' it but gave it back in a way to make it seem like we had had it all along. The police commander said a prayer, thankful the camera was found, and then the police left. It bothered all of us a bit to be accused of stealing a camera so blatently, when in fact someone else from their family had taken it, and then the same person tried to frame us loosely in the end. Besides that, we had a great mini-vacation in Kpetoe.

If you want to see a video of fellow PCVs and I doing a Ghanaian dance, check out Molly's blog: mollyrumery.blogspot.com Its about halfway down the page.

Thursday, September 2, 2010

Food

Its time for a brief overview of Ghana food. Essentially there are two parts to a meal - the carbohydrate substance side and the stew/soup part. Fiber rich foods such as yam, plantain, cocoyam, rice, and cassava (lots and lots of cassava). These carbs provide a ton of calories and fiber, and the empy carb calories vectors are either boiled or fried. Majority of space and calories come from these semi-nutritionless plants. This fiber-intensity is a mixed bag however, because it takes a while for your stomach to fully process that enough food is actually in your stomach: it seems to take about 15 minutes, after the carbohydrate concoction expands in your stomach, for your body to realize it has enough calories and there is no more space to cram more food in. Unfortunately, this feeling comes about 15 minutes too late, so my strategy to eat some and then stop BEFORE I feel even close to full. Even so, there have still been some close calls where I feel absolutely terrible and roll into a food coma where I cant talk and just want to find the closest bed or similar non-dirty surface to lay down on and wait for the agony to pass. Even though I seem to have figured this out fairly soon, I have seen some Ghanaians that try and eat as much as possible now and deal with the consequences of food inundation later. I imagine it feels like a hot air balloon inside you filling up with air.
Okay, let's move onto the stew and soup part. This is where the protein and fat in my diet come from. For stews, they first make a paste by hand mashing onions, garlic, tomatoes, and hot peppers together in a bowl. Then they heat up some red oil (palm oil), put the paste in, and either serve over rice or next to sliced yam, cocoyam, etc. For the soups, Ghanaians first make the paste then dump everything into a large pot with titanic quantities of oil or groundnut (peanut) paste to simmer.
Fufu, besides being a fun word to say, is actually mashed plantains and cassava served with groundnut soup. I dont know where I stand with fufu. It comes in a big dough ball in the middle of a sea of soup and you rip off a piece - then, contrary to all natural instincts and probably because of the sliminess quality of fufu, you swallow it whole. No chewing, no deciding if you like it or not, no spitting out fish bones. Overall, an efficient way of eating - I can sense I need to stop (because it will expand inside) after less than one minute of actual dining time. Preperation, not included in eating time, is about 2 hours. Consequently, adults frequently get their children to do most of the hard work for them (pounding fufu with a person-sized battering ram, grinding veggies in a bowl, and other things). But, the fufu pounding makes so much noise that for seemingly hours on end a constant boom, boom, boom is ringing in your ears.
Also, food here is spicy. Good news is that it tastes good and keeps you regular. Bad news is there is no milk to negate these effects.
Updates on my life: I start teaching in about 10 days and will probably teach math and ICT. Ive been to a few football matches and its crazy - there are the people who watch the game and the people who are just there to dance and drum. I also got my first taste of Ghana ceremonies - a guy I met while here from the US was enstooled (made a subchief) on Tuesday, so I went to check out his ceremony... I should have brought my video camera.

Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Saviefe Gbogame

After being in my new village for about a week, there are a few things I can describe in great detail.
Time has minimal meaning to people in my village. Its a running joke among all Ghanaians (and Ewes, the people that speak Ewe and live in Volta Region) that if someone says "Etso", meaning tomorrow, said event will definitely not occur tomorrow. Example: I asked my landlord to have a carpenter come over to help refinish some chairs. "etso". Even after asking several times, tomorrow has not come yet.
My house has grown on me. My two rooms have been transformed into home after much purchasing in Ho, the regional capital of Volta Region and various additions like a mosquito net. I live with a retired gentleman who is around 75 years old, a mother around 35, and her three kids ranging from 2 to 10. I couldn't ask for a better first week. Except the money for our move in allowance still has not come through. Its only two weeks late, and 400 cedis that I could sure use now to buy essentials such as a stove or a phone (my last one got wet and was KIA).
So I think that I have been acclimatizing well with my fellow 400 villagers; I have been making a big effort to learn more Ewe so I can communicate with people, and can now generally buy items without speaking English. My day is usually as follows:
6 - wake up
8 - take a bus to Ho and buy stuff
1 - take a bus back from Ho to my town
3 - putter around and reflect on shopping goodies for the day
6 - eat
9 - sleep
repeat

Ive also decided that after two years here in Ghana, going back to the US will be weird. My mannerisms and way of speaking is already changing, but so is my appreciation for just sitting outside for hours on end.

If you want to see exactly where I live, I am trying to do it on Google Maps, but for now I can roughly describe it as between Anfoeta and Dzolokpuita in Volta Region Northwest of Ho about 12 miles. Here are my exact Earth Coordinates
6.767665, 0.40761

Mia do go!

Wednesday, August 11, 2010

Goings On

Aha! I leave for my site in two days! Also, tomorrow is swearing-in where I will officially become a Peace Corps Volunteer (PCV). I killed a chicken this morning while my host brother killed another one right beside me. There are for my going away dinner tomorrow night. As my homestay comes to an end, I've definitely learned a lot about being in Ghana and living as Ghanaians do. After managing to fit everything into one bag to take back to my site, I just have to travel by myself via tro-tros to Saviefe Gbogame. I'm glad training is about to end, I'm ready to get into my community, make new friends, and start off two years Peace Corps.

Monday, August 2, 2010

The Goat

So yesterday was Sunday, and as I was sitting on my porch in the morning around 8am my host brother came up and told me I would be helping to slaughter a goat. I was astounded. Now, I have nothing against this poor little goat (a dwarf goat, as all goats here are), but I leaped at the opportunity to help out. We took the goat around back of the house, and while I was holding the legs down my host brother slit the goat's throat. It was a little weird feeling the legs slowly stopping to fight, but even more weird was the blood splatter that comes from slashing its throat: similar to a coke and mentos experiment with red dye, blood traveled a good 10 feet horizontally.
Next, after killing the goat, it is put over a fire to help burn some of the fur off and to make the animal really stiff and easy to handle (pick up). After Nana cut off the rest of the head, I held the soon-to-be-stewed goat still while he went to work butchering it. Its quite a process, but in the end we had some nice sections and, since we killed the goat ourselves, made a nice little stew with spices and pieces of select meat. Wow, this was actually one of the best tasting stews with bread I've ever had. However, some of the pieces (cartilage, bones, fat, skin) one is expected to eat in a stew - with your hands. I had some liver, some skin, an area around the spinal cord all in a nice little lunch on a Sunday morning.

Friday, July 30, 2010

Site Visit

Ahaa! I have successfully returned from my site visit! The counterpart teacher I will be working with while in Ghana is fairly young (23), my headmaster seems like a responsible and supportive person, and my town (village, rather) is amazing. At 400 people strong, its pretty tiny - we have one lady that runs a store in a closet-esque space, and one other lady that sells Waakye (pronounced wah-chee). Thats it. Everyone in my town farms for a living and goes into Ho, our regional capital, for market days and to purchase anything required. A few notes about Saviefe-Gbogame:
There are two forms of transportation to my site on a dirt road; one is by motorcycle and the other is a large Metrobus (think charter bus). However PC will not let me ride a moto, and the bus makes one pass in the morning heading into town and one pass in the afternoon coming back to town. Thats about it for getting in and out. So sunday, the bus didnt run and I needed to leave. So I walked an hour to our nearest paved road, waited another 45 minutes for a taxi to come by and take me to Ho. Overall, 20 kilometers took nearly 2 and a half hours to accomplish.
My living arrangement is two rooms in a compound in the village, so I live with a few other people there, but furniture is quite nice.
My school is exactly what I expected - no electricity, no running water, and built by local villagers 25 years ago.
But, Good News! I have electricity in my house! Now I can read at night
So I'm back at training right now, and I'm about ready for it to be over. I just want to go to my site and begin what I set out to do - teach, learn, and integrate into the local culture of Ghana.

Saturday, July 17, 2010

Not too much has happened since my last post. This week was intense language training, and while I am not fluent yet, the basics of Ewe are coming together. Speaking of which I will talk a bit about the language.
Ewe is the anglicized version, because the 'w' in Ewe is actually more like a V. The alphabet has 30 letters (same letters as English minus C and Q) including a bilabial unvoiced F that looks like a normal f but a longer tail at the bottom and bilabial voiced V with swooshes at the top of the V. The F is like you are blowing out a candle and the V is simply how an f and v are similar - with one you have a soft sound and the other is hard. Also in this new alphabet is a new G, an X that makes a different sound (like a hebrew H), a backwards vowel C (like the a in alms), a lowercase n with a tail (no English equivalent), a d that sounds like you are saying "dir" as in dirty fast. Also a good thing about learning that language - each letter except for E makes the exact same noise everytime. One letter, one sound. There are diagraphs in Ewe that make similar sounds to those found in English (ch=ts). So, cheese is pronounced the exact same way, but spelled completely different.
Cheese = Tsyise
I will try and see about getting the actual letter characters so you all can see what they look like.
This upcoming week I will be meeting my teacher counterpart at my site and conducting my site visit the second half of the week in Volta! Finally I can really practice my Ewe greetings outside of the classroom and the scattered Ewe I meet on the streets.
Facts:
I had some pants tailor made for about 12 dollar including fabric and sewing.
Its been cool that past couple nights - Ive needed my sheets.

Saturday, July 10, 2010

Hard Work in Ghana

So this is actually a serious post. In many places around the country one sees people doing all sorts of manual labor that in the US we would have machines do or otherwise find a simpler way to do it. Example - Construction materials seem to generally be carried atop someone's head to the destination. Granted, this is Africa and materials are scare, but to me it seems like it would be easier to create a solution that involved putting a lot of materials onto a cart and pushing/pulling that cart to its destination. A more relevant example of what I want to convey is the process of 'weeding'. Weeding is young men (and boys) taking a machete (called a cutlass or matchet here) and manually cutting grass with the blade. They hunch over, swing, and can clear a little bit of area with one stroke - overall an inefficient way to clear a large area, unless you have an army of students. The question I posed to my host brother was why no one used either a lawn mower, create an old push-mower, or even develop a scythe type tool that could cut grass more effectively. His answer was simple - in Ghanaian society, you are considered lazy if you don't do a given amount of manual labor. Even a metal grass mower that could be fairly easily made would cut down on weeding time, but the impression I got was that some type of machine doing the work for you is equated with you being lazy.
This is a huge difference than the US where efficiency has driven most inventions to be better and better, but here in Ghana you need to do a certain amount on labor, spend a certain amount of time proving you are able-bodied enough to possess a family. Playing games such as chess or scrabble more than once or twice a week is frowned upon because it means you dont have enough time to do your other activities.
In summary, the culture I have experienced is one that emphasizes hard work over efficiency, washing your own clothes by hand over spending that time reading a book, and more emphasis on working hard than thinking hard. Perhaps that last part is a bit unfair, so hard work is preferred more than finding an easier way to solve the problem. As a consequence (this is just a conjecture), people seem to waste a lot of time weeding (a simple mower could be better), washing clothes (a child could wash the same clothes and not use the adult's time), walking (perhaps a money constraint to take a taxi), or fixing things (time and money costs to repair a bucket as to buy a new one). I realize that there are a lot of people here with excess time on their hands, especially children, so labor is not a problem, but I'm just surprised that efficiency, at least in areas I pointed out, has not taken hold.
FACTS -
If its raining, every shop shuts down.
A training session was delayed because we had a rooster in the church we were meeting in.
People try and talk to me while I run, so I just have to ignore them and run at 530 when people aren't on the streets.

Thursday, July 8, 2010

Vision Quest

This past weekend I went on a vision quest of sorts to visit a current volunteer's site and see how they live day to day. Dispatched to the Central region (which is actually on the beach) I had a blast. Went to a secluded beach for a day trip, watched my host teach a class, and ate some bushmeat (antelope) and rice. The trip to my host's site interesting because we passed a road that warned drivers...
"WARNING: 32 people killed here"
but the drivers still absolutely fly on that baby. Also the road divider is more of a guideline than a rule, so hurtling 70 miles an hour in the wrong lane when another tro is coming 70 miles an hour head-on... wow, its best just to ignore the obvious danger and put on a tune.
I went to Cape Coast for a day, and was extremely surprised to see other white people there that were not with Peace Corps. I said hello to one person, and after that person didn't even look at me I realized it was a futile effort.
During my ride back to Kukurantumi I was waiting for a tro to leave (tro-tros are the dominant form of transportation here, see earlier posts) a preacher came onto our tro and everyone in the tro stopped whatever else they were doing and we listened to a good 20 minutes of prayer and praising Jesus. All in a language I didn't understand, so I pretended not to speak any Twi and ate Mystery Meat Pie from some street vendor. Going to see another volunteer at their site was a great experience: I could see how he interacted with the local population and daily life. I cannot wait to go to my site in Volta.
Onto to other good news, I am not always called obroni when I walk past people. Most people who I talk to call me 'Kofi Mike'; Kofi is my name day because I was born on Friday.
Finally, I describe myself as very adventurous recently (the past year or two), and traveling around Ghana alone was exhilarating - until I found myself crammed in the back of a tro where in order to not receive a concussion you must hunch over your seat and lost nearly all feeling in your lower extremities while riding along on the most pot-holed dirt road you can think of. At that point I realized I don't like traveling in a tro.
Last part of the post will be dedicated to random facts and information:
The Ghana-Uruguay match was insane. Never seen people so happy after we scored the first goal.
Electricity is only sometimes an option.
Running water is almost never an option.
Local women have mastered urinating while standing...

Sunday, June 27, 2010

So first let me recap my last post: food and medical condition. Peace Corps reads all of our blogs (rightly so), so when our CD (country director) was here at training to give a talk Saturday, he reminded us all that we choose what to put online and once it is there it will be there forever. He also mentioned that he read a "certain person's" blog that described a medical condition (it must be me because when he brought it up everyone in our group not-unobviously looked at me), which will be online forever. I'm okay with that because I plan on simply describing my experiences, observations, and thoughts while here in Ghana.

The past week has flown by. Basically just learned Ewe and finished our teaching sessions at local JHS schools. This upcoming week is language intensive (around 5 hours a day devoted to Ewe) with some other random sessions. Actually training seems very well organized and everything is done for a purpose. I am extremely glad that it is well organized because that way I can focus on integrating with Ghana and not worry/complain about training.

Yesterday we went on a sweet hike to visit a waterfall and a super-cool rock. A rock is not an accurate description, maybe more like a 40 foot giant boulder perched atop a skinny neck with an 8 foot diameter. You can climb up a ladder to get to the top and we (trainees, and there were about 60 of us that went) had a photoshoot of sorts with some really great scenery in the background.

Saturday - this was our day of training at hub site. One of our discussions involved Ghanaian beliefs in ancestors, witches, and herbal remedies. I personally believe in only some herbal remedies (mainly due to the placebo effect) and not witches or ancestors. We were asked if Americans believe in witches. I do not believe I have even ever met anyone in the US that believe that witches are real, legitimate people that can transform and cast evil spells on people. However, I am in Ghana: everyone (let me stress, EVERYONE even if he or she is educated) believes that witches are real and can perform sorcery and herbalists can cure any known ailment. You may have heard about Salem witch trials (there is no punishment for being a witch, just to be shunned), but Ghana as a whole and as individuals believe that witches and sorcery are real issues. And with all due respect to Ghana and its people, I just do not believe in witches and I find it fascinating that Ghanaians do.

Miscellany:
I now take everything out of my pockets watching pass the primary school across from my house because they try and reach into my pockets for money.
GOAL is a sugar cane liquor that comes in plastic shot-sized bags for only 20 pesewas (about 15 cents). Smells good, tastes bad, hangover ugly.
The town I will be in for site (my two years) is Saviefe Gbogame; check it out on Google Maps.
I thought doing laundry in the US with a machine was bad, but here every stain you accumulate on your clothes you spend hours (2-3 hours average for all my stuff) scrubbing it out by hand.

Saturday, June 26, 2010

The Game

So Saturday was a joyous occasion for all of Ghana - Ghana beat the United States in World Cup play to advance to the next round. Unfortunately I was cheering for USA to win. Myself and about 20 other trainees and trainers (PC trainers are simply current PCVs in the country) descended upon a place in New Tafo called ... the Point? I don't really remember what it was called but after we showed up around 5 pm, and before the game started we hung out and had a few beers. Then about 50 or so Ghanaians came and a television was set up outside for all to watch.Watching Ghana score their first goal was like watching people on Bourbon street watching the Saints win the Superbowl - this was the biggest event EVER. The rest of the night was uneventful except for the US equalizing, but cheering about a goal in a sea of people just glaring at you does have its downsides. Overall, it was an experience to watch people to enthralled by a game.

Wednesday, June 23, 2010

More exciting goings on in Kukurantumi

*Ed Note: Please read all the previous days before this one if you have not already!!*
I got my site placement!!! I will be in the Volta region near the regional capital, Ho. I will be learning Ewe; unfortunately, no one here in Kukurantumi can speak Ewe so I will rely exclusively on my language trainers. There are about 30 of us heading to the Volta region, most to the central area between Jasikan and Ho. I think it would be fun to organize some monthly get-togethers once we get to site to keep in touch and express our collective Americanism with others. I SHOULD have electricity, but who knows. Also, I have to get my water from a borehole (lever thing). I will update my site opinions once I visit there in July.I have started 'Practicum', or teaching for local JHS (Junior High School) kids. Lesson planning is actually the worst part because the kids are quite attentive and respectful in class, probably because 'caning' is a legitimate form of punishment here. Also, schools here are essentially a three-room house with no electricity or water. The bathroom is beside a bush. In fact, the bush is always an option anywhere a bush is found in Ghana. I looked out of my back window once and found someone peeing on a bush not 10 feet from my window.Okay, finally I will talk about the food. Fufu is really fun to watch people make, and actually consuming it is climactic as well - because it tastes like slimy mashed potatoes with some soup. My host mother, Major (pronounced May-Jo), makes an excellent fried egg with palm oil. Let me stop here and talk about palm oil. It is used in everything. I have not eaten a meal except for breakfast that did not contain palm oil. Its a red cooking oil with a spicy taste and transcends all food boundaries you might have had. Tomato sauce palm oil. Soup palm oil. Garden salad palm oil. Fried chicken palm oil. Fried cat meat palm oil. (I did eat cat meat and was quite tasty). In brief, palm oil is to my adventure here in Ghana as shrimp is to Forrest Gump. Anything + palm oil = food.A bit more about my host family - Nana, my host brother, is a university student on break for the summer and is really a cool guy - speaks perfect English, is smart, and likes to talk. Stephen, another host brother, is going to a local SHS (senior high school) and I interact with him occasionally. Kevin is the 4 year-old kid and only says my name when he is around me. Linda and Rose are two of my host sister (I dont know everyone's name yet) and seem to do whatever it is that they do. Major is my host mother (but really a great-grandmother) and doesn't speak English except important phrases such as "You. Food." and "Hospital. You." Oh I should share why I was sick.Brief warning - I am just describing my symptoms and everything, but it is in some detail. So either scroll down or get ready to be mortified if you are a male or laugh if you are a female and not my mother. So Tuesday I noticed that walking hurt. Hmmm. So when I got home I was curious. Turns out my left testicle was twice the size of my right one. No, that is not normal. So I called the PC Medical Officer and explained my 'situation' (the answer was not 'walk it off'). Apperntly I had a bacteria infection from somehow, but he prescribed me antibiotics and asked for me to go to our hub site. Well when I got there, there were about 45 other PC trainees there that I hadn't seen in a about a week, and everyone wanted to chat. Unfortunately I was in no mood to talk so I went and watched World Cup. But people came up one by one and were insistent upon why I was there.Them: "So Karate Mike (my identifying factor as there are three Mikes here), why are you so blue?"Me: "Oh I'm not feeling well and had to get some medication"THem "I'm sorry, is it malaria or something else?"Me: "Something else"Them still not getting a hint: "Well what exactly?"As which point I proceeded to tell everyone who asked exactly what my condition was. We have about 70 total trainees, and now I think I personally told about 68 what my 'situation' was. Update: Swelling has reduced testicle to normal size, but still hurts a little to walk and is still tender. Continuing to take antibiotics and ibuprofen liberally.That's really about it, I didn't mean for this to be such a long post, but there was a story to tell. If you feel like talking to me call me on my cell phone. +233 277364492
EXTRANEOUS FACTS:Blackboards here are cleaned in a heavy alkaline solution, and my hands were BLACK after the first time I taught
They have an open-sewer system here for everyone to partake in smelling waste all the time.
Loudspeakers come on from 4:30-6 in the morning to announce things. Never fails to wake me up.Actually there is always noise coming from somewhere - it is never quiet.
We also have a herd of goats at my house.

Monday, June 14, 2010

Moving into Homestay with a family

I just moved into my homestay house! My family is pretty large: we have about 15 people living in our compound and even more coming and going all the time. Ghana played their first match yesterday and won 1-0! So, of course, there was a huge celebration in our house. Spontaneous dance parties were had too; one of my host brothers (or a kid that lives here) is about 4, doesn't realize I do not speak Twi, had the funniest dance I've ever seen. I went to a Presbyterian church yesterday just to see how it was - I had heard a bit about how different church here was... and wow! To start off with, they dance for 20 minutes before even starting ceremonies. Then they spoke in a language I didn't understand (even though I found out later it was English!), and my host mother gave me money to put in the collection bins, but she told me I had to dance and walk up there at the same time. On the flip side, I went to a fairly short mass of only two hours (again, I heard rumors of church stretching to four hours long!).My room that I will stay at is essentially a concrete cube with two windows and a door. Forget about carpet, its too expensive and hot. Running water? Negative, though we do have a toilet that you must pour water into the back before you can flush it. Electricity is nice, and while I do have an outlet in my room it does not work.Just a few more things I've noticed being here in Ghana - obroni means 'stranger', but collectively means any non-Ghanaian person, so when I walk by a primary school I hear choral chants of "Obroni! Obroni!" and my very own posse escorts me as far as they can go during their recess. Changing topics, when I got here I thought that people carrying stuff on their heads was weird, but I have become accustomed to it by now - my host sister carries a cooler on her head every morning to work. I've seen someone balancing chairs, boxes with bags of water, bowls of corn ears, and any tuber-like vegetable you can think of. All the head carrying gives locals excellent posture, so I'm going to sketch what people here look like:
o o
| |
| (|
(| |
|) |)))
| |
_| _|
Male Female
BONUS TIDBITS: My mosquito net isn't large enough so I have to cover my feet with a sheet and stick them out of the bottom.
Average guess on my age here - 35
My filtered water comes from a well and tastes like a fish swam around in it for a couple days.
I have never seen a Ghanaian drink water.

Tuesday, June 8, 2010

A first look at Ghana

Yes! I am alive and in Ghana right this second! Its not quite as hot as I thought, but it sure is humid. Right off the plane you can smell that the air is different, whether from the tropical climate or the sanitary conditions of Accra is up for debate. Accra is a large city, but unique from others I've been to because although it has somewhere over 3 million people, a vast majority live in small one story houses. Additionally, they have an 'open' sewer system which means just that - the sewers are above ground and smell terrible. The people, however, are extremely friendly and outgoing to everyone they talk to. They will smile and wave to you as you drive by in a tro-tro.What is a tro-tro? Imagine a 15 passenger van but with an extra row squeezed in and the aisle down the side has fold out seats to accomodate more people. At one point today, a tro I was in had 22 people! The tro-tros are pretty much like a bus system - there are semi-designated stops and meeting points, but each is simply owned by the driver and conductor. Some are of questionable quality at best while others are full vans, minus the seatbelts. Finally, in order to conserve power, tro's generally do not turn on their headlights at night to save on gas money. This leads to several obvious problems, so Peace Corps reccommends we do not travel after dusk.

Tuesday, June 1, 2010

Training

So I'm at staging in Philadelphia right now. Its a weird feeling getting to know all these people are in the same boat as I am. Theres no explaining exactly how we all feel about leaving for Ghana in two days, yet somehow we are all connected and realize our lives will change immensely. On a side note, I really was not (and am still not) nervous about leaving mentally or emotionally, but physically I have a huge knot in my stomach - eating, my favorite pastime, has become a challenge the past 48 hours. Eh, the feeling will pass.
Stagin so far has been pretty mild - they looked over all our forms and I am now an official Peace Corps Trainee! Score! Then a group of about 12 went out to eat and hang out... and I came to the realization that although I probably won't be seeing them every week after our training ends, I have something in common with every single person I've met besides being a future PC Volunteer - everyone has a demeanor that can only be described as outgoing, composed, and determined. Its pretty much a 180 degree shift from a lot of the people that I met in Vail (sure I met some good friends, but the overall impression out there was one of douchebagginess.
*if you don't know what that word means, look up douchebag on urban dictionary http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=douchebag*

In summary, it seems like it will be easy to get to know my fellow trainees, but the real challenge still awaits us.... GHANA. I'm sure it will be epic.

Wednesday, April 28, 2010

First Post

Ok came up with a name to describe my trip to Ghana. Finally, Ghana, and Mike's Excellent Adventure has come to fruition. For those of you that don't know, or perhaps forgot, I will be leaving for Ghana June 3rd to serve in Peace Corps as a math teacher! I am really excited and as of right now I'm still in the pre-packing phase before leaving. However I intend to update this blog as often as possible (probably every other week or so) until I finish in August 2012...which sounds really really far away right now.
Just to let everyone know, I will try and report situations as unbiased as possible, but with the whole different culture and everything it should prove interesting. If you want another look from a different part of Africa, check out Jess over in Mozambique ( http://mozambicanadventures.blogspot.com/ )
My life right now isn't too exciting - the pace of living is so much slower than living in Vail was, but its nice to get some relaxation time in before heading out to the tropics. Packing has not started yet, and probably will not until at least 5 days before I leave - I need to leave some time to procrastinate.